Xplore's New Rugged Tablet PC Is Not All It's Cracked Up To Be

Xplore's Tablet PCs are designed according to Military Standards for Environmental Testing (MIL-STD-810F), which require devices to survive, among other tests, 4-foot drops to concrete on all of the unit's corners, sides and edges while running. Test Center engineers dropped the iX104C2 from a height of 3.75 feet onto concrete. After a fall on one of its edges, the unit turned off. After another fall, the unit's glass screen cracked. That said, engineers were impressed that all of the shattered screen's shards remained in place and that the unit continued to function even with a broken screen.

Another problem is the placement of the unit's power button. Many rugged tablet products have sealable covers over their power buttons, but the Xplore unit's power button is completely exposed, which could easily cause the unit to turn off accidentally.

An earlier Test Center review of Xplore's previous rugged tablet model, the iX104, revealed that the stylus was not well-secured to the unit. In the new iX104C2, the stylus is attached with a cable, but the cable broke during testing after being subjected to slight pressure. Despite these problems, the iX104C2 line does boast several improvements over its predecessor. The new unit includes a 10.4-inch screen with AllVue LCD technology, which maintains display brightness under nearly all lighting conditions, an important quality for rugged use. The feature worked as expected during testing. Some models include a dual-mode screen that can switch between an active and passive digitizer, a useful feature in rugged markets.

Products in the iX104C2 line are Intel Centrino-branded for enhanced wireless mobility and run on Windows XP Professional Tablet PC 2005 Edition. The Tablet PCs include rugged magnesium chassis, with rubber corners to improve the odds of survival during drops. Buttons on the units' faces allow for screen rotation and navigation, and rubber covers hide the Tablet PC's printer, Ethernet, two USB 2.0 ports and power jacks. The iX104C2V includes a Pentium M ultra-low-voltage CPU, 400MHz Intel 855GME chipset, 256 Mbytes to 1 Gbyte of DDR RAM at 333MHz and a 40- to 80-Gbyte shock-mounted hard drive. The unit weighs 4.66 pounds, measures 11.2 inches x 8.25 inches x 1.6 inches and has a four-hour battery life.

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